Type: Article
Ó hOgartaigh, Margaret. ‘Edward Hay: Historian of 1798’, Eighteenth-century Ireland/Iris an dá chultúr, Vol. 13 (1998), pp 121-133.
This article assesses the impact that Edward Hay’s involvement in the political events of the 1790’s had on Catholic policies between 1792 and 1822. Ó hOgartaigh looks at Hay’s career in the 1790’s, which marked the ‘entry of middle-class Catholics into Irish public life’, and assesses the impact of the Catholic Relief Act, the Militia Act and the Convention Act (all passed in 1793) on Hay’s career. The article examines Hay’s activities before and after the 1798 rebellion in an attempt to analyse Hay’s precise role in the revolt which, according to Ó hOgartaigh, has been distorted by Hay’s own History of the Insurrection of the County Wexford, a ‘personal vindication’ produced in order to clarify and, in some instances, conceal his role in the rebellion.